


Slowly, and then all of a sudden

by wifebeast__s



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Gen, Who Needs Happiness?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-29 17:44:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7693612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wifebeast__s/pseuds/wifebeast__s
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A rather brief character study; Ethan Chandler reminisces on his destiny, his actions throughout the series, and his connection to Miss Ives, attempting to make peace with his fate and his sins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. God plans

**Author's Note:**

> This is barely edited and there was no beta. It was one of those things that sprang up around midnight - basically just a title and vague idea, so I am trying to get it all out. Maybe I wasn't devastated enough? Or maybe I'm just trying to grasp at the larger themes at play in Penny Dreadful.

She told me that all of this was God's plan. I now believe she was right.

But the devil, he is cruel.

I met her after a show in London. She walked into that bar like it was an everyday thing to sit across from a strange man and offer him employ hunting dark things in the night. She was beautiful in the way that all mysterious and sad things are. 

To be honest, I didn't know what to expect, and even had I an idea, I'd have been wrong. The shrieks of those creatures. The blood and organs. I had seen enough war and genocide in my time. But she stopped the creature with a look. 

I thought her so far above me; I could only stare up at her countenance in awe and pledge myself to her protection. Big words. I know why I spoke them, though at the time I did not.

Where she walked...light followed, though she herself was shrouded in darkness. She was divine.

Brona. Was she part of the plan? Frail and secular, a foil to Ms. Ives. Attainable. I walk down the paths of my life every night in the dark, and I know that I loved Brona, and though it shames me to say it, I think sometimes – how much time was lost? Would things be different?

I know the answer to that, of course.

When I chose to follow the path to the demimonde, I chose to follow her. I said as much; her response, I can still hear in my dreams. And I with you. They cut through me then for a different reason, and they have grown sharper now. 

Another turn down a path that may have led elsewhere. I never should have kept the visit to that ship yard a secret from her. Thinking of all of the ways I might have saved her...the sins at my back hold not a candle to the regrets that lurk there now. Had I been with her, would the possession have happened? Had she not been possessed, would she have been safe?

Again I know the answer.

I flatter myself that she loved me from the beginning. That it was her grace and goodness that made her smile sadly when I told her about meeting Brona. Perhaps she did. Her eyes, when I chose that tarot card. The Lovers. But she would never begrudge my happiness, though of course that, too, was short-lived and ended in pain.

Brona means sadness, and I have to wonder now if that name was meant for me more than for her. Her tale was sad, but it ended, while I continue this long march through life with its brightest light now gone forever.

I was by her side during the worst of it. She spoke words to me...she did not speak. The devil used her to wound me, and wound they did. I would not be stolen away from her. Not then, at least. But I did not fear that beast within her. At the time, I believed it was my own strength, my own demons that looked the demon in the eye and said with resounding clarity NO.

It was not the darkness, speaking those words so forcefully to expel him from her. It was the light. Lupus Dei. I was always meant to save her; I was always meant to banish that evil from her and bring her back to us. 

Brona died the same night that Vanessa lived. Such a mix of pain and relief has never again been known to me. I loved Brona in the way that I have always loved frail and sad things – reflections of myself, perhaps. But I loved Vanessa soul-deep. 

I can't rightly say to whom I was drinking more that night in the Mariner's Inn. Most likely myself.

Time to mourn; then time to slay.

The devil is cruel.


	2. God Sent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Essentially Season 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently finally publishing the first chapter allowed me to finish the rest of parts 3 and 4, so I'm simply posting it all at once.
> 
> Honestly - as I wrote, it was not only cathartic, but I kind of got angry at Ethan.

Being alone with Miss Ives was always somehow electrifying. The air was charged around her, and it was as though I could feel the tendrils of that charge reaching toward me whenever she was near. I miss that feeling. Air is less sweet without it, breathes less life into me.

I thought we finally were at peace. I should have known better.

In that first encounter with the witches, the desperation to cling to life, to her life, was palpable. I could smell it; I could smell her fear. I shared it, though what we each feared was so different.

That one moment of shattered quietude spiraled out into the increasing darkness that was a war with the unseen, within and without. I was hunted at every turn, on edge, on guard. I had to protect myself in order to protect Vanessa. Protecting her, saving her, was my calling.

Everything that creeps in the shadows of nightmares continued to bleed out of the demimonde during that time. Witches making pacts with Lucifer. The Verbis Diablos. Prophecies and spells. Blood and sacrifice.

I met Hecate after saving her from a carriage. We had a charming téte-a-téte, and she was beautiful, and I noticed, even as I knew not to trust her. I suspected she had been sent by my father, like so many before her. I should have known better.

She threw my words back at me, clutching a lock of Vanessa's hair, after she and the others attacked in our home. 

Vanessa became a shell of herself. She was wrapped in terror, afraid of herself and disbelieving all around her. I did what I could, yearning to free her of this burden.

Through all of the horror, Vanessa saw fit to share with me some of her secrets, some of her pain. She did not weep to tell it, did not ask for my shoulder to lean upon, though I would have given it freely. In this way, she was the most beautiful woman I have known. She could bear all the weight upon her shoulders, stand tall, and still smile. She was not broken or withered. She shone ever in the darkness, even if she could not see it.

The moment I knew that I had fallen in love was standing at the top of the stairs in Grandage Place. The weather was as electric as the air between us. The lightning illuminated the hallway, her hand stretched to my face, graced me with the most tender of touches. It was as though our moments together came crashing around me into a shuddering container for my heart. I suspect I will never feel that again in my lifetime.

Perhaps she suspected Sir Malcolm. She is smarter...she was smarter than I. I would have followed her anywhere. I did not have to, however. I was able to follow her to that place that, for her, was home. Another secret, another part of her only I was given access to. 

Those were my happiest days, but I should have known better.

I made promises to her that I intended to keep. I broke them all. Every last one of them. 

But there, in that house on the moors, I made her happy, too. I took away the tree that haunted her. I taught her to shoot, not that she needed the tutelage. We laughed, we danced, and she smiled – a true smile that reached her eyes and burned itself onto my heart. I wanted always to see her smile like that. 

It never could have lasted, of course.

The witches were not like the creatures we fought before. They were not driven solely by instinct, but by a lust for power. They were cunning and intelligent. They had planned well. We were, of course, drawn back out.

Upon our return, Victor, Sembene and I worked to convince Vanessa to wait, to plan. And I met Hecate again. I could have killed her. I didn't. Because I am weak.

She left without speaking a word to any of us, planning to go in alone.

We should have known better.

I have flashes of memory from that night and no more. The taste of blood. Vanessa's hand reaching toward me. Running from the castle.

I had been sent by God, but I could not bear the weight. I was selfish. I turned, and I walked away. I told myself it was to spare her the pain of my own death.

I should have known better.

_At the end of the day, the only thing we have is the people we trust._

And I left her with none.


	3. God forgives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ethan ruminates on his sins, the forgiveness of such, and Vanessa's surrender to the promise of the end of loneliness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously, though, Ethan was selfish. I understand from the story-arch perspective why things needed to happen, but still.

I was not sent to the noose. I instead was tossed onto the sea to be returned to my father, from whom I had so long been running.

I have come to think of my time in the desert as a metaphor for my redemption. I did my time there. I spent my 40 days and 40 nights within it – give or take; I was tempted. I gave in. Because I am selfish and weak – a man, though more than a man, but a man born to sin like any other.

Over time, I learned of Vanessa's life during my own absence. 

As I wrestled my demons, as I ran from the secular punishment of my crimes, and as I fell into the arms of Hecate, embracing the darkness that Vanessa had offered to embrace on my behalf, she suffered. 

All had left her. 

She was ever the strongest of us; none would have guessed she could break. None would have foreseen her turning from God. 

I did terrible things in the desert. I allowed myself to be swayed toward sin. I watched men die by the hands of Hecate but by my bidding, not in self defense or in a cloud of the full moon, but in full consciousness of my actions. I gave into the temptation of Hecate's open arms. I was pulled into my darkest depths and bathed in it.

But my greatest sin lies in all that happened in London because of my fear.

I gave my secrets to the wrong woman. 

We all seek redemption. We all seek the light, even when we have fallen, even when we have run as far away as possible. No matter where we run, God is there, ready to forgive.

Divinity lies in the capacity to forgive.

Vanessa understood that. She forgave me all my sins, before I had committed them. She accepted them for me, did not ask me to embrace them myself. And while I had been sent to protect her, I believe that she was the one to save me. 

I did not have it in me to kill my father. He was a hard man, a damaged man, but I do not believe he was an evil man. I have been so blessed that many have taken on the sins that were mine. And what's more, I have known 3 fathers that have loved me – 2 on Earth.

And as I had the love of 2 fathers, Vanessa walked alone.

It is not for me to judge her, who had been left by all. When she was at her most vulnerable, her last, greatest enemy struck, and he struck not with violence or anger. He struck with an outstretched hand, a warm smile. He struck with the promise of companionship and acceptance.

Where Dorian saw mystery, he saw her true. Where I walked away, he opened his arms. Where all gave their burdens, he offered release. He offered her love.

I arrived in London too late.


	4. Lupus Dei

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ethan realizes the truth of the title bestowed upon him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always loved the darker side of classic Romanticism. Poe, Melville, Hawthorne - all knew that there is beauty in sadness. And this show captured that so wonderfully. Delicious torture. And while the ending was sad, I think it was triumphant, at least for Vanessa.

Every step of my life led me to London, to that bar, to that table. To her. In my life, I did not believe in fate, in destiny. I did not trust in God. It led me, inexorably, to her side nonetheless. She prayed, and I came. She saw me, coaxed my soul out of myself to stretch before her for inspection. 

Many have suffered. That is the way of the world, the cost of our original sin.

Vanessa suffered in her soul, a woman ever striving to reach God and ever pulled away by the forces that sought her for what she was. Her sin was not her own, yet did she do penance.

Her smile.

The creature, stopped in its tracks.

The Lovers.

Our cursed existences.

Watching her from afar, fearful, even as I was drawn to her over and over again.

Seeing her wither, as she fought for her soul.

Fighting by her side.

Dancing on the moors.

Kissing in the rain.

Her hand, stretched out to me, time and time again.

_Who doesn't love a lost cause?_

I loved her most of all, yet I gave my best to others. 

Lupus Dei. The wolf of God, sent to fulfill his destiny, to save the vessel of Amunet. 

I should have known better because the devil is cruel.

And for once, I could not be selfish or weak.

When Miss Ives offered me a way out, I stayed. When Vanessa asked me to walk with her, I turned away. I wrote to her of my love; I wrote to tell her that she would have to walk alone once again.

But she was not alone. She was never alone.

I was sent to Vanessa, and I loved her. I will always love her.

God forgives; he has a plan, and he sent me to save her.

But the devil is cruel.

I was never meant to save her life, to have her for my own. I was meant to save her soul.

There was only ever one way to do that. I had been selfish. I had been weak. I had loved her from the first, but never fully until it was too late. Only at the end did I love her enough to save her, enough to end her suffering. 

All of that time wasted.

She fell limp into my arms, her last words to me ones of hope, of peace.

My road was difficult, but hers was doomed. So now I walk alone.


End file.
